


holy water

by kate_the_reader



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Pre-Slash, Quote: You go too fast for me Crowley (Good Omens), Scene fill-in, what were they thinking in the holy water scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-09
Updated: 2020-01-09
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:22:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22184035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kate_the_reader/pseuds/kate_the_reader
Summary: What was Aziraphale thinking, when he gave Crowley the flask of holy water? What was Crowley thinking, when he was left holding it?
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 7
Kudos: 17





	holy water

**Author's Note:**

> As always, mycitruspocket and MsBrightsideSH were my first readers. Thank you, darlings!

Soho is so much brighter and louder and flashier since the war. Clubs and bars and neon — and shadows. Aziraphale watches it all from the safety of his shop. The louche young men in tight trousers, their hair grown long over their ears, the women in tiny dresses and pointed shoes. But nothing is ever really new, when you’ve watched people change and change and change forever.

He watches for one he hasn’t seen in a long while. It’s not unlike Crowley to disappear, and Aziraphale can guess at how difficult the last war must have been for him. He’s up here to tempt them into sin, but what they do to each other is so much worse than anything he devises. It had been difficult for Aziraphale, too, but at least he could try to help. Just as he does now, when he sees someone lost in the darkness of this maze of temptations.

But when he does catch a hint of Crowley’s presence, like the smoke of a just-extinguished candle flame lingering in an empty room, what he is up to is so terrible, so foolhardy, that Aziraphale refuses to believe it. That he can have returned to his ghastly obsession — or perhaps he never gave it up, entirely — makes Aziraphale so angry, angry with the world, with all the angels above and all the demons below, with God, with Crowley! that he almost can’t think.

And of course, he’s risking everything for it because the one way he thought he might have had of obtaining it without personal risk was so firmly shut down when he did ask, all those decades ago. Aziraphale has never forgiven himself for that. For saying those hurtful things when Crowley had come to him so vulnerable. He hadn’t understood what could have driven him to it, then, when the world was in so many ways much less awful than it had been, when the humans were turning so much of their ingenuity to building and improving, instead of destruction and terror. Shut up in his shop among his books, he hadn’t understood the fear of failure, of being found out and punished, that must have weighed on Crowley, his only escape to creep off, Aziraphale knew not where, and hide himself in sleep for years at a time.

And now he has flung himself into this reckless scheme, and Aziraphale wants to be able to tell him he shouldn’t, he doesn’t need to, things are getting better again, humans are less hideous to each other now, there are plenty of small ways Crowley can get on with his job, so many temptations, he won’t even have to do anything, really, just write a few memos.

Write a few memos and slip into the shop, come and hide among the books, go for a walk in the park, feed the ducks. ‘Crowley!’ he wants to say, ‘please don’t. I can’t bear it. What will I do, if you get what you want? How will I go on, if you aren’t here?’

But how can he say that, when he flung that nasty word — ‘fraternising!’ — at him and stalked away? When he had reduced all that they were to each other to that, out of his own fear of the truth? When Crowley came back to risk everything for Aziraphale in the midst of all that horror and suffering, when he had done something stupid, again. When Crowley has never reproached him for his naivety, for needing to be rescued, again and again, when he has misread the depths of human behaviour. 

And how can he know what is driving Crowley? What horrors he has been subjected to by his overlords, who don’t, as he has so often pointed out, send reprimands, however strongly worded? 

He stands at the door of his shop, looking out at all the lonely people, and longs for one being, the only one he ever wants to seek out, but still unable to bring himself to do it.

And then he sees him, slipping out of a pub, looking for all the world like one of their pop stars, his eyes hidden, of course, behind his dark glasses. The lights, lurid neon pinks and blues and yellows, reflecting off them as they reflect off the rain-slick streets and the blank windows.

Aziraphale has to act, has to do what Crowley has done so many times for him, has to save him, even if Crowley wants nothing more to do with him. Even if all he gets is knowing that Crowley is alive somewhere in this world, that they could see each other, could spend even a brief moment of time together, could try to rebuild what they had before, however slight that really was.

So he walks into a shabby church, when the harried priest is nowhere to be seen, and fills a flask, whimsical with his own tartan — will Crowley notice, will he care? — screws the cap on tight, tight, just as tight as he has kept his feelings screwed down all these years. And waits, looking out of his shop, watching tirelessly, until he sees it, Crowley’s Bentley, luxurious when he bought it, faintly ridiculous now, but somehow suitable for the persona he is affecting these days. It’s idling at the kerb, almost as if Crowley were waiting for him, which he most certainly isn’t doing. 

If he had wanted to see Aziraphale he could have come, sauntered through the door and poked around among the books, turning them over with his long fingers as if holiness might rub off on him like dust. They could have gone out together somewhere, for a drink, or stayed in and drunk that bottle he’s been saving (even though he tells himself he’ll just drink it one of these days, nothing special, doesn’t need to be shared with anyone). Or they could have simply gone for a walk, sat on a bench by the water and told each other things; anything, just to listen to each other’s voices. Aziraphale wouldn’t even have cared if Crowley had mocked him; anything to hear his voice again.

The Bentley idles at the kerb and Aziraphale snatches up the flask and dashes out, pausing to gather himself before he sees Crowley.

Crowley’s voice is surprised, a little mocking: “What are _you_ doing here?”

Aziraphale tries to explain, tripping over his words — ‘caper’ — what made him choose that word? it’s not a caper, it’s deadly serious!

“... too dangerous. Holy water won’t just kill your body. It will destroy you completely.” How can he make Crowley understand what that would mean, for him? But how can he make this about him, what he would lose? How can he be so selfish? He can’t help it. If only Crowley knew how much he means to him. If only Aziraphale could bring himself to tell him, at last.

“You told me what you think a hundred and five years ago.” He’s been counting.

Aziraphale would give anything not to have said what he did in the park, but you can’t go back, even for them time doesn’t work that way. Aziraphale hates this, this defeated Crowley. “And I haven’t changed my mind.” He still hates what Crowley wants, a way out, but of course he has changed his mind about helping. The risk Crowley was prepared to take is worse, far worse, than having what he wants, safely in a flask with the lid screwed on tight by Aziraphale’s trembling hand, as tight as he can make it, so no drop will ever spill.

Crowley takes the flask with nervous hands. He can’t spill it, but it’s clear that he hadn’t dared to hope he would ever be given it.

“This the real thing?” As if he can’t believe that Aziraphale isn’t taunting him, even now. 

“After everything you said?” Words neither of them has forgotten. Will they ever? Will he ever get a chance to try to replace those words with other, kinder words? 

“Should I say thank you?” Just like in Paris, a demon shouldn’t thank an angel, any more than an angel should thank a demon, and draw the attention of those, on either side, who do not understand kindness.

“Well, can I drop you anywhere?” A gift of service, something so ordinary, so like what the best of humans do for each other, do for those they love, a little gesture, but it says so much that he can’t bring himself to accept.

So he tries to soften the blow, tries to let Crowley know that one day maybe he will be brave enough, to go for a picnic, for a meal. Is this all he is ever prepared to offer? Food? Outings? When it’s clear Crowley wants so much more. When he also wants what Crowley wants.

And Crowley isn’t deterred, not yet. “... anywhere you want to go.”

_I want to go where you want to go. I want to go with you! When will I be brave enough?_

“You go too fast for me, Crowley.” The pain on his face, in his eyes, which Aziraphale can’t see, but can imagine. Aziraphale can’t bear it. How could he, again? He can’t stay here any longer, hurting Crowley more with every moment that passes.

* * *

When the door closes on Aziraphale he sits stunned for several minutes, his hands caressing the flask. But he must go, go anywhere, anywhere that is not here, right outside Aziraphale’s home.

He came here to try his scheme, his ‘caper’ as Aziraphale called it, because he knew he could find willing fools to help, for very little money. And he is ashamed of how calculating he was in his choice of accomplices. But there are plenty of places where the desperate and foolish can be cheaply bought. There’s only one place with Aziraphale, the real reason he came here. Came back here. He cannot help himself, always returning, no matter how Aziraphale tries to put him off, to warn him away. Because for every time he flings a barb that finds all too painful a target, there’s a time he needs Crowley, and is glad of his service, and his face lights up, and he smiles, and says: “Crowley!” in his beloved voice. For every 1862 there’s a 1941. So he comes back.

Aziraphale doesn't understand why he needs this 'suicide pill' as he called it. How can he not understand how terrified Crowley is of losing all this, all this _life_ they have here? How petrified he is of being forced back Down There for all eternity — away from ingenuity, and conversation, and plants, and music, away from Aziraphale? 

Perhaps he does, just a little bit. What did it cost Aziraphale to give him this, against the better judgment of his head, maybe against the deeper dictates of his heart? He sounded so sad when he spoke of what holy water would do to Crowley, how it would erase him forever. That had lit a spark of hope, when he’d said: “I can’t have you risking your life.” Crowley had really thought something was about to change. But it hadn’t. ‘Better not’ say thank you. Still looking over his shoulder for who was listening Up There, ready to yank him back into line. 

So he’d asked without asking: ‘Please come with me, stay with me, anywhere, anywhere will be fine with me, just come with me.’ Still not ready to accept that his endless wait was not over.

Only for Aziraphale to offer the possibility of some future when they could “go for a picnic. Dine at the Ritz.” The bitter promise of those words. Not now, sometime, some other time, I might be brave enough to offer crumbs of myself.

“You go too fast for me, Crowley.”

It was like a physical blow. How much slower can he go? But even so, Crowley is left with cruel hope. 

One day, Aziraphale might be ready. If only Crowley can wait that long. They have until the end of time.

And if he cannot endure, he has Aziraphale’s flask.

**Author's Note:**

> I’m working on more happy together fic, stay tuned.
> 
> And if you like this story (or want to weep on my shoulder), come talk to me in the comments.


End file.
